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Today is Document Freedom Day, the international
day to celebrate and raise awareness of Open Standards. On this
occasion, we would like to reflect on the importance for public
institutions in general, and for the European Commission in
particular, considering its leadership role, of using Open Standards
in all their digital communication and services.

In order to push for a more enlightened policy
approach to managing innovation and knowledge, FSFE has submitted a
response [pdf] to an EU consultation on patents and standards. This is
the latest action in FSFE's ongoing work in promoting Open Standards.

The European Parliament has approved funding for several projects related to Free Software and privacy. In the EU budget for 2015, which the European Parliament adopted on December 17, the Parliamentarians have allocated up to one million Euro for a project to audit Free Software programs in use at the Commission and the Parliament in order to identify and fix security vulnerabilities.

A study released on Friday says that the European Parliament must adopt Free
Software and Open
Standards in order to fulfil its transparency obligations. The
authors conclude that "the Rules of Procedure of the European
Parliament should whenever possible make Free Software and Open
Standards mandatory for all systems and data used for the work of
Parliament."

At a meeting in the European Parliament, FSFE's president Karsten
Gerloff highlighted several ways in which the Parliament could become
more transparent, and make better use of Free Software and Open
Standards.

In a short intervention, he urged the Parliament to finally make its
live streams accessible to Free Software users. He asked the
Parliament's IT administration to enable IMAP access on its mail
servers to allow Free Software users to connect through standard
protocols, and warned the Parliament to avoid lock-in as it progresses
towards greater digitisation.